How to create an Email Marketing funnel that converts?

While you may hear some professionals in the marketing industry say that email is dead, this is far from the truth.

In fact, Email Marketing remains one of the highest performing strategies that a business can employ in the modern age.

When we correctly design an Email Marketing campaign, we can achieve a significant increase in our ROI .

But, to get the most out of this strategy, generate more leads and increase the sales of your business, you must have a well designed Email Marketing funnel .

That is why we wrote this post, where you can see:

Email Marketing is more alive than ever and email funnels are working at full steam. Let’s take a look at the details you need to know about this topic in order for your business to grow!

What is an Email Marketing Funnel?

An Email Marketing funnel is much more than sending random emails in the hope of converting a lead into a customer.

This type of marketing is designed to nurture potential customers over a period of time that will depend on the customer life cycle of your business.

To create an effective Email Marketing funnel, you must understand and anticipate the needs of your customers.

Your company has more than one type of customer and each one must be led through the appropriate funnel.

Your Email Marketing funnel must meet three objectives:

1. Capture the attention of your subscriber / lead .
2. Attract them enough to drive them to your website.
3. Provide enough information for them to contact you directly with questions.

An email funnel is not a sales promotion, it is a series of emails that are sent at strategically planned times. They can be in time sequences or based on certain activation actions on your website.

Why is creating a buyer persona important in Email Marketing funnels?

Your clients can be grouped into different types of buyer persona that differ completely from one company to another.

However, it is important to identify them because each type of buyer needs a different Email Marketing flow to convert.

We are going to put an example to better explain what a buyer person is. Our fictitious business is a bookstore and we have three different clients:

• University students
• Parents
• Adults

We do not need to delve into these buyer personas to realize that each of them will have very different purchasing needs.

Identifying the buyer persona for the Email Marketing funnel is not that easy. However, once these groups are identified, you can quickly determine how to talk to each buyer persona you have.

By properly placing these buyer personas in the email funnels, you will increase the chances that they will become customers.

How to create an email funnel for your company?

The way to create an email funnel for your company can be divided into four stages.

Each of the stages represents unique points during the customer’s journey that require different types of content.

If you don’t provide the right content at the right stage, you could lose customers. An email marketing funnel takes time to develop, but it’s worth it because the ROI is significant.

The top of the funnel is to generate leads

The top of the funnel is to attract and capture the leads, that is, Internet surfers who are more likely to buy from your company.

Your email list is the big difference between having an acceptable quarter and exceeding your sales goals. However, there are numerous ways to generate leads for the top of the funnel.

The first, and also the best, is to create an email subscription. Usually we create a free offer that attracts our leads and give them an opportunity to voluntarily provide us with their name and email address.

Once they provide it, you can send them all your offers by email and place them in the corresponding funnels.

Another way is to create a landing page . In this case, we have to create a single page that captures all the leads for a particular marketing campaign. They will all receive the same type of email after converting .

The middle of the funnel is to nurture leads and qualify them

Now that you have leads, you must qualify them so that they become sales. But remember, it has to be in the right measure, we must not over or under feed them.

The goal is to create enough touchpoints that keep your brand in mind, but without appearing authoritative. All the emails you send in your funnel must be in sync.

Producing leads requires a time sequence (i.e. week one, week two, week three, etc.) or they can also be generated faster with a value proposition. These triggers would automatically place certain potential leads on different lists.

For example, a lead looking for interactive content and one looking for a WordPress host would be in two separate lists.

These emails would have a different communication related to the type of service the leads clicked on on your website.

Some examples of enriching emails include:

• Personalized communications
• Success case studies
• Customer Success Stories
• User-generated content
• Free webinars

Some companies will cultivate leads for a few days, while others will cultivate subscribers for months.

The length of your sales cycle will determine the frequency and time you need to nurture leads for your company.

The bottom of the funnel is to close deals

As your leads get closer to the bottom of the funnel, they become more and more qualified to make the big conversion and become customers.

You drew them to your site, converted them to subscribers, then leads, and now it’s time to close the deal. Your most qualified leads are more likely to convert. 

For example, there are cases of people who abandoned their e-commerce cart or did not finish filling out a subscription form. You can redirect these leads with an email that encourages them to go back where they left off.

Also, you can end your email funnel by adding messages with a sense of urgency. This will encourage any of your potential customers who are close to making a purchase to finally check out and / or order under your brand. Nobody wants to miss out on a good deal.

But don’t overdo it to the point that it sounds too good to be true. These final emails must have just the right sense of urgency to create a positive result. 

Simply nurture the prospect one last time to remind them of the value they are receiving by purchasing from your company right now.

The funnel is circular and everything starts again

It is much cheaper to retain an existing customer than to convert a new one.

This does not mean that you should not continue to grow your email list and win new subscribers with your email marketing funnel. Simply, you should not forget the customer who has already made a purchase, as it is much more profitable.

Identify a new trigger or preference for what you want to see in emails and repeat the process. Keep nurturing him until he’s back at the bottom of the funnel and becomes a customer once more.

Email Marketing Best Practices to Consider

When it comes to Email Marketing there are some best practices that should be employed to ensure we retain high-quality subscribers.

If you don’t follow these best practices, your domain may be marked as spam. The integrity of your domain is incredibly important because this determines whether it appears in your subscriber’s inbox or spam folder.

Customize the email greeting

This is one of the easiest and most important ways to convert leads into sales. A personal greeting makes it look like you’re sending your lead an individual email. This creates a positive frame of mind to read the rest of your message.

Stay in the top half

The most important information should stay in the top half. By that, we mean the area where the message is cut off.

Anything that requires scrolling or sliding is considered below the fold. Your potential customers are more likely to click on a CTA in the top half of the email.

Never buy contact lists

You should never buy a contact list. It may be tempting to do so, but you should not send messages to people who have not requested to receive your emails, as you run the risk of being marked as spam.

Use three or fewer typefaces

Your email funnel should not be full of information, nor should it be difficult to read. Create an appropriate text in one to three typefaces. The additional fonts should be used for headlines and to divide the text.

Optimize preview text

With so many people checking email on the go, the preview must be very well thought out.

This little snippet will be what determines if you have a good open rate or not. You can include emojis in your title and preview the text if it’s appropriate for your audience.

Take the time to create an attractive preview text, as these are the only seconds you will have to convince your lead to open your email.

Include a signature

If your leads want to contact you, they will look for a signature in the email. Make sure you provide them with a way to email or call you.

Also, make sure they know who they are talking to and who they will need to call. This builds a more personal relationship, which makes it easier to nurture the relationship until the lead becomes a sale.

As you can see, an Email Marketing funnel is vital to growing your business in the modern age. With the right strategy in hand, your ROI can be significant.

To increase your results, you can use an Email Marketing calendar to organize your nutrition flows and ensure the consistency of your strategy.